Have you ever printed your favorite imageand you noticed that you were missing an important part of your imageor even worse, your heads werecut off?!? You were more than likely printing a 5 x 7 or 8 x 10 and you felt like walmart must have mis-printed your image, but thats not true! For once, walmart didn’t do anything wrong!
Different digitalcameras will produce images in differentaspect ratios. The aspect ratio describes the relationship between the height and width of the image. For most cameras,they will only have the ability to produce images in a 3:5 aspect ratio. While, the most common aspect ratio is 3:5, some cameras will allow you choose a diffent aspect ratio.All this means is thatthe height of the camera’s images is 2/3s of the width.
The problem that we run in to when creating an image in a 3:5 aspect ratio, or in any aspect ratio, is thatnot all print sizes are equal.Here’s a list of different aspect ratios and print sizes:
2 x 2 –1:1 aspect ratio
4 x 6 – 3:2 aspect ratio
5 x 7 – 7:5 aspect ratio
8 x 10 – 5:4 aspect ratio
The aspect ratio of an 8 x 10 is 4:5, so if you were using a camera with a 3:5 aspect ratio and you wanted to print your image in an 8 x 10, you would be cutting off TWO inches! To give you a better understanding of how these different aspect ratios will affect your images, take a look at the most common print sizes listed below.
You may findthat not all images will be negatively affected by different aspect ratios. Depending upon the image, you may be able to crop out unimportant information when you go to print an image,andstill create an interesting photograph.For example, a20 x 40 print of the image shown abovegivesyou a long narrow print, which createsa new and interesting look to the photograph.You will also notice that intheimage above, a 5 x 7 print can be adjusted so that the image crops negative space above the subject.However, some close-upimages will bring problems when cropping. If you are forced to crop at the subject’s joint’s (knee, ankle, elbow, wrist), the viewerwill loseimportant information, which createsan uninterestingimage.
Threeways to overcome the problem of printing images that have adifferent aspect ratio than your camera:
- Determine what print size youwill use the most and adjust your camera’s aspect ratio accordingly.
- Crop your image before printing so that you canallowimportant parts of your image tobe included in the print.
- THINK about what you will be doing with your image! If I know that my clients will want to order a family photo to fit in their 20 x 24 frame above their fireplace; then I will take a step or two back when taking the photo so that I canleave room for cropping to a 20 x 24 size later.
